What is Anthropology?

 Introduction:

• How do our lives connect with others around the world?
• examples?
• technology?
• immigration?
• globalization?
• Increasing human diversity at our "doorstep" opens the possibility for both deeper understanding and greater misunderstanding.
• why is this so? 
• ethnocentrism
• the "lens" of culture
• "experience" and 
• Everyday offers the opportunity for "cross-cultural experiences"
• examples?

What does anthropology offer? 

1. This semester we will be learning the anthropological "perspective"
2. A unique set of tools and skills for understanding our rapidly changing, globalizing and interconnected world.

Anthropology is interdisciplinary and frequently borrows research data from fields in the humanities, social and physical sciences. It is also reflexive, in that anthropologists always consider the bias inherent in research (theories and hypotheses) as well as anthropologists' interpretations. At the root of anthropological understanding are the opposing perspectives of ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.

• ETHNOCENTRISM: is the belief that the way you think and behave (your cultural system) is naturally and obviously correct.
• CULTURAL RELATIVITY: is the belief that a culture can only be understood the worldview and practices of a culture, from the perspective of those who are part of that culture--the larger cultural system in which these are contained.

Why Study Anthropology?

• We try to understand the lives of OTHERS so that we can understand OURSELVES.  

• In the course of our normal everyday lives we fail to critically observe our own lives. We rarely even notice what we do or believe
• Studying other ways of thinking (habits of mind) and other ways of behaving (traditions and practices) reveals the ASSUMPTIONS underlying our own behaviors. These assumptions can be described as CULTURE.

• We study human cultures so that we can understand current events in the world today. 
• Much of the conflict and turmoil that we see in the world is based on cultural conflict 
• Resolving these issues requires that we understand the values, beliefs and practices of those in conflict

• We live in a global community. Because of globalization, our social and economic activities and deeply intertwined. Trade and migration make our ability to interact with and within other cultures essential 
• Understanding the forces of globalization and culture change in essential to successful interaction 
• Understanding other cultures is essential to successful interaction

• WE live in a diverse and complex society as a result of the forces of migration, globalizations and economic development. 
• Understanding the nature of inequality and the forces which create and maintain it is essential if we are concerned (as anthropologists are) about social justice.
• These forces and processes are dependent on the values and beliefs in culture.

CULTURE is the sum total of the practices, values, beliefs, ideals, and products shared by a group of people. Culture is:

• learned
• shared
• symbolic
• interconnected (its parts)

Individuals in a culture do not have to live together as part of a society. culture is a more basic worldview of which society is one "functioning" part.

Culture is often viewed as being both ADAPTIVE and IDEOLOGICAL.

• the adaptive view of culture sees it as a mechanism through which a          group of people adapt to their environment. 
• We will see how the British School of Social Anthropology and materialist theories rely heavily on this definition of culture
• the ideological view of culture sees culture as a way of thinking (worldview). 
• We will see how the Structuralists and American Structuralists view "culture" in this way.

Most anthropologists see culture as being characterized by both of these aspects. This is most clearly seen in the American School of Anthropology founded by Franz Boaz

CULTURE is the LEARNED, SUM TOTAL of SHARED BELIEFS, PRACTICES, BEHAVIORS and PRODUCTS of a group of people. It is INTERCONNECTED and composed of SYMBOLS.

ANTHROPOLOGY VERSUS SOCIOLOGY

• CULTURE versus SOCIETY
• "marginality" (marginal) versus "deviance" (deviant)
• qualitative versus quantitative data
• cross-cultural versus Western (traditionally)
• rural/urban versus urban (traditionally)
• fieldwork versus survey research

FUNCTIONS OF CULTURE

• Adapt to the environment
• Create and perpetuate social cohesion
• Answer Questions about the unknown
• Educate Children

PERSPECTIVES ON CULTURE

• Cultural Relativity versus Ethnocentrism
• Emic versus Etic
• Emic: perspective from someone insider the culture (a member)
• Etic: perspective from someone outside the culture
• Real versus Ideal
• describes the complexity of culture which is made of of individuals who vary around the shared values, beliefs, and practices.
• This dynamic of heterogeneity (internal variation)  does not negate the shared whole we call culture.

THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

• people and communities
• structures of power
• Interconnections

Four fields approach and HOLISM:

• Physical anthropology
• primatology/archaeology
• prehistoric
• historic
• Linguistic Anthropology
• descriptive
• historic
• sociolinguistic
• Cultural Anthropology
• ethnology
• ethnography

GLOBALIZATION:
the worldwide intensification of interactions and increased movement of money, people, goods and ideas within and across national borders.

• anthropology as a discipline emerged out of the forces of globalization. (colonialism, slavery, emergence of global capitalism)
• mid-nineteenth century anthropology aimed at organizing the vast quantity of information being accumulated about people across the globe, during this intense era of globalization
• today, amid an even more intense era of globalization, anthropologists focus on understanding the process of globalization itself while documenting the lives of people across the globe.
• Key dynamics of rapid globalization are:

• time/space compression
• changing the way we think about space and time, rooted mostly in information, communication and transportation technologies
• flexible accumulation
• the ability to move production facilities around the world to capitalize on cheap labor and resources, lower taxes and fewer environmental regulations. (flexible about how they accumulate profits)
• increasing migration
• movement of people within and between countries
• rural to urban
• underdeveloped to developed 
• remittances
• transnational relationships/families/communities
• uneven development
• the unequal distribution of the benefits of globalization
• extreme wealth and extreme poverty ("shithole countries")

Globalization snd the Environment:

• anthropocene
• the current historical period marked by extreme impact of human culture on the environment-reshaping the planet in permanent ways.
• climate change
• human cultures and globalization a creating climate change which in turns forces cultures to adapt.
• changing communities
• vulnerable communities are encountering powerful economic forces which are reshaping families, gender roles, ethnicity, sexuality, love and work patterns.
• debates over the effects of globalization within local communities are intense. (critics and proponents) 
• diversity versus traditions

Globalization and Changing Research Strategies

• multi-sited ethnography
• Is it still possible to study a local community without studying the impat of larger forces of globalization?